February | 2019 | leavingleavesineaves

NY started as a slave State. Get that in your head, NY was founded as a Slave State. It did abolish slavery but that path was not a pretty one and it was designed to allow Whites to continue to profit off the backs of enslaved people and off of their children. Once the end of slavery was in sight the children of those enslaved people became America’s first dreamers, neither slave or free.

Black Americans born to enslaved black women in NY State after 7/4/1799 were not slaves but they were not free. Their parents were slaves but they were something else. They had some rights their parents did not, but they did not have control over their own bodies and had to wait till they were either 28 for men or 25 for woman to be free at last. They were our country’s first dreamers caught between legalities.

Many New Yorkers pride ourselves on having been a Union State during the Civil War as NY being a northern State did not have slaves. Indeed we were a major terminus for the Underground Railroad. However, New York, prior to 1827, had a long history of slavery and had had slave markets in New York City, and at least one group of slaves was sent to the Rochester Area to be sold.

When the new State was formed and the first State leaders came to power in 1777 there was some slight movement to move to abolish slavery. The first serious attempt, however, did not begin until 1781 but this attempt fell apart as the legislature wanted to free the slaves but also keep them from having the vote or any chance at real power. If that plan had passed NY would have had a two caste system one caste men who could vote, and the other black men who could not. This is, of course, referring to men, as New York already had a two caste system with men, but not women having the right to vote and hold office. Interestingly Aaron Bur, was a vocal voice for the full and immediate end to slavery.

When the issue next came to the legislature in 1799 it passed “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.” Under this plan people who were already slaves would remain slaves for life. The children born to slaves were made not slaves but they were not free. This is where the dreamer part comes in. All children born to slave women after 7/4/1799 were “free” but had to remain the property of their mother’s master as indentured servants. This was until the men turned 28 and the woman turned 25. This way they would spend their years making money for their mother’s masters. Slaves who were alive at the time moved from being “slaves” to the status of “indentured servants.”

In 1817 the State passed a new law giving freedom to slaves who had been born before 7/4/1799. However the law did not go into effect until 7/4/1827. Meaning these people had to live for 10 more years to get their freedom. 10 years is a long time, and how many died during that 10 year period or were sold to the South.

At that point, slavery was still not completely illegal in NY, as travelers could bring slaves into the state for up to 9 months at a time. This vestige of this part of the law was finally repealed in 1841.

What all this meant was that many New Yorkers, who had slaves, sold their slaves down to the south, rather than lose the value of these individuals. So for many slaves the move to abolish slavery in the State, simply meant a move to a harsher and hotter Southern State.

From the standpoint of today, the job of ending slavery in NY got done. However there were 28 long years between 1799 and 1827 when slaves and their children were in a legal limbo between being slaves and being free. That is a freaking long time to be nowhere but in bondage, with just a whiff of a promise that those promises would be kept.

The importance of history is in remembering what has occurred in the past, so we don’t repeat the same mistakes in the future.

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